Here are SpacePolicyOnline.com’s tidbits for June 12, 2019: Scolese and Raymond nominations; international payloads for the China Space Station; rift among planetary scientists over lunar science. Be sure to check our website for feature stories and follow us on Twitter (@SpcPlcyOnline) for more news and live tweeting of events.
The Decadal Surveys produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine were front and center at a House hearing today on NASA’s science programs. Decadal Surveys are highly respected by NASA and Congress because they represent a consensus of the scientists engaged in each of NASA’s space and earth science disciplines on the top scientific questions that need to be answered and the missions to find those answers. Executing those missions is not always straightforward, but witnesses urged that the priorities be followed.
Bigelow Space Operations has paid deposits and reservation fees to SpaceX to take private astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The company says it will charge $52 million per seat for missions of one or possibly two months.
The chairwoman of the House committee that authorizes NASA activities is worried that NASA may starve science in order to pay for the Artemis Moon-by-2024 program. At a hearing today, she pointed to a request from the Trump Administration to allow NASA to shift money from other NASA accounts into the Moon program and comments by NASA officials that “hard choices lie ahead” as the source of her concern.
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Adam Smith said today that agreement has been reached on the Space Force proposal. The language will be added to the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) during committee markup later this week. It will not be the same as what the Pentagon proposed, however, and in any case the final details must be worked out in conference with the Senate. One of those details is whether it will be a Space Force or Space Corps.
NASA is opening the International Space Station (ISS) doors to increased commercial activity, including space tourism. A number of tourists have visited the ISS already, but always under Russian sponsorship. Now NASA is welcoming them too, and has issued a price list for how much they will have to pay for food, life support, communications and other necessities. Transportation is not included. That will have to be arranged separately with SpaceX or Boeing, the companies building U.S. commercial crew space transportation systems that NASA hopes will be operational next year. That is just one aspect of commercial activities NASA hopes to catalyze with its new policy.
Here is SpacePolicyOnline.com’s list of space policy events for the week of June 9-15, 2019 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
Scott Pace said today that President Trump’s tweet yesterday reflects impatience, not a lack of support for NASA’s lunar program. For him, the message was that NASA should spend less time talking about the technical details of getting to the Moon and more about the bigger vision of putting humans on Mars. In discussing the lunar plans, Pace said the U.S. part of the Gateway will remain in its minimalist form until the International Space Station (ISS) is retired because NASA cannot afford both.
President Trump threw the space community into a tizzy this afternoon by demanding to know why NASA is intent on talking about sending people to the Moon, a feat achieved 50 years ago. He wants to focus on Mars, defense, and science instead. The abrupt change of heart comes just 25 days after he sent a budget amendment to Congress asking for an additional $1.6 billion in FY2020 to get the Artemis Moon-by-2024 program underway and tweeted that he was “restoring NASA to greatness” by going back to the Moon and to Mars.
NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) reiterated today that it views the Green Run test for the Space Launch System (SLS) as “critical” from a safety and mission assurance standpoint. NASA continues to debate whether the test can be skipped to speed up the program and get the first launch off the pad in 2020. The head of NASA’s human spaceflight program said last week that NASA’s internal recommendation is to do the test, but a decision has not been made.